Roti street sweets in Chiangmai

Here is some yumminess at Chiangmai’s famous night bazaar, hundreds of stalls of, often, schlock, but not a few cool things too and all together a great deal of lively atmosphere and browsing — given enough time and diligence there are some great deals to be found especially inside some of the three story indoor [...]

Spirits in the house

Spirit houses are found on nearly every property, shrines to spirits residing there past, present and future, so far as I understand them. This one was in a vacant lot in Kanchanaburi and I wasn’t sure if it remained from a prior construction or was part of a future project.
On a bus ride [...]

Heroism

As ridiculous as it sounds, we had a very hard time finding flip-flops for Langston that either fit him or that he would accept. Eventually, at a stall in Hanoi’s Old City, we met both criteria — with a red and black pair stitched with the word “Marlboro.” We bought them with a [...]

Graveside

I visited my grandfather Alistair William Hay’s grave today for the first time. It seems somehow auspicious that the visit falls on the 20th anniversary of the day I quit drinking and got sober. Maybe I would have visited otherwise, though that’s unlikely given where I was headed, but even if [...]